Create "Jukebox" Dashboard with Album Art for Echo or Sonos Devices

Thanks for this its what i was after.

@Bill_Findley thats a real nice dashboard

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So this gave me an idea which started working on but thought would put here in case anyone else gets inspired

Started to put together a TV remote which some GIF’s to select the channels. Behind the scenes I have rules linked to virtual switches in Smarthings that select the channel via IFTTT on my BroadLink pro

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You guys should definitely share these in the Show Off Your SharpTools Dashboards! thread! Awesome work and great creativity!

Has anyone migrated to the new Smartthings app yet? I’m still running Classic but will have to upgrade soon. All of my music integration relies on EchoSpeaks which is being sunset in about 2 weeks. Does the new Alexa integration allow album art and all the same level of control with SharpTools?

Hi @Matthew_Barnes, the SmartThings’s new Alexa integration doesn’t support all the features provided by Echo Speaks, and I’d encourage you submit a feature request via ST’s online form. However the good news is the Echo Speaks’ developer is working on the “lite” version that he plans to release before Echo Speaks goes away. (See the ST post by Anthony.) But we are not clear what features will be supported by the light version at this point as Anthony is still working on it, but we will test it out when it is available.

Hi James. Thanks so much for the fast response. I’m really fretting the migration to the new app but by the looks of it my hand is going to be forced in October. :pensive: Anyway, do you know what features will be supported or where I can get that info. Haven’t been able to find it on the Smartthings community. I’m really most concerned about music control and album art.

Anthony, the developer of Echo Speaks, has not commented much on what the lite version is going to support. But you can ask him by tagging ‘tonesto7’ in the ST post, so he can be aware of the request.
As he mentioned in the ST community, he was about to explore the new ST api, so he may not commit to anything, but he has been a really great guy that willing to extend his work to the “lite” version knowing many liked and relying on Echo Speaks, and trying to help as much as he can.:smile:

Thanks for all of the great suggestions and examples in this thread. I have two questions I am curious if anyone has successfully implemented:

  1. Is there a way you pass the shuffle command to searchAppleMusic with your playlist name to randomize the playing of your playlists?
  2. Has anyone been successful using the Jukebox dashboard to execute native Alexa skills? - I have been able to by creating a switch and a lock to pass to Alexa Skill to enable an Alexa routine that executes the Alexa skill. Seems like an extremely roundabout way to get there. and 2a) If you have, can you pass a secondary parameter to the skill launch for the scenario where the skill initially asks you which feature you want to use?

@Barry_Martin, welcome to the community! Not sure how I missed this post though.:yum:

Unfortunately, the command doesn’t support the “random/shuffle” parameter, and I am not aware of any command to shuffle in Echo Speaks. But I’d encourage you to suggest the feature in the Hubitat’s thread to get the author’s attention.

This is the only way to trigger Alexa routine at this point afaik. Though I think you can just use a virtual lock and change the lock’s status in the dashboard, and use the lock to trigger Alexa Routine.

This is great! Really digging the platform after 2 weeks. I’ve got a nice dashboard now with my Spotify playlists available to play on sonos speakers, however, what it seems to do is add the songs into the queue? I haven’t really figured out how the songs are getting added, sometimes it drops the playlist next. After some testing, the rules/commands are working correctly if I clear the queue using the Sonos app. Curious if anyone else is seeing this with Smartthings playPreset command? Is there a command I can add to the rule to clear the queue?

@Mike_O That’s interesting. Does your rule just use the playPreset command and the preset number as the parameter? I can test this when I am back to the office on Monday. (Don’t have a Sono with me now.)

@James correct, the rule executes playPreset. Below is an example of one.

image

From the testing I did, the rule is working correctly, but the Sonos queue is not cleared before adding the playlist. If I start with a clear Sonos queue the playlist is added. If I then click another playlist it seems to add the playlist and shuffle the queue. So now the queue is made up of any songs already in the queue and the newly added playlist. Let me know if you want me to capture any screenshots of this.

Thanks for checking it out! Just curious if others have noticed this behavior and if there is a way to force it to clear the queue. I noticed if I start the playlist from the Sonos app it does clear the queue so wondering if it is something with the Smartthings/Sonos integration?

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Hi @Mike_O, I was able to test it this morning and reproduced the same behavior. playPreset command adds the preset to the existing queue, and I never noticed it before because we always had the shuffle disabled in the queue, so it always starts to play the new preset just added to the queue when playPreset is fired, but the old preset(s) indeed remains in the queue.

I did a quick search in the SmartThings community, and didn’t see anyone mentioned this. I’d encourage you to post this behavior to SmartThings community and reach out to SmartThings support so they are aware of this.

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Thanks @James! I’ll post over in the SmartThings community too. I confirmed that I see the same behavior via the SmartThings app when playing from favorites. I hadn’t connected Sonos up to SmartThings previously, but I liked the idea of having it available on a SharpTools dashboard.

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My primary tablet is a Google Slate, and I’m looking to have some sort of dash with currently playing music just like the jukebox pictured, that is somehow able to show what’s playing on our whole-home audio system via Chromecast audios. We’re either using voice commands or a app/service like Plex or Pandora to bring the music up.

Would that be possible using these instructions? I’m a bit overwhelmed and not sure where to start or if it’s even possible.

Hi James,

I am trying to create media tile for playlist. Just curious, how do you make that Imagur artist image to be circle?

I think @James originally just cropped the images in a photo editing software before uploading to imgur. Now that Themes with Custom CSS are available, you could do it with Custom CSS too though.

In a Theme, you could create a style named ‘rounded-image’, then add the following Custom CSS:

.--theme-style-rounded-image { border-radius: 50%; }

Edit: To add Custom CSS to a Theme, scroll up to the top of the theme editor and toggle the Advanced switch on, then scroll back to the bottom where you’ll find an input for Custom CSS.

Edit2: And I forgot mention that after you create the Theme / Style, you would update your Dashboard settings to use the Theme and edit the Media Tiles on your dashboard to update their Style selection to use your new ‘rounded-image’ style.

*Any custom CSS snippets provided are not officially supported and may have to be tweaked as new platform updates are released.

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Thanks so much for the prompt reply. Absolutely helpful!

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Hi Josh, I could follow all Edit1 and 1st part of Edit2, but I don’t get “edit the Media Tiles on your dashboard to update their Style selection”. Can you please show a screenshot for the 2nd part of Edit2? Thanks.

Let me know if this helps… if not, I can record a short video in a bit to show the flow.